This is a the personal website of James Jackson. Here I will blog and post almost anything. This could be anything to do with programming, work, games, films, holidays, pictures and whatever else I want to post here. This site is running on my own Content Management System that I am currently developing. I'm currently working on a blogging system. I will be giving the site a nice make over as soon as I can. For more information about me and the site please take a look at my Hello World post.
Sonisphere have already announced 12 bands for the Knebworth festival. Download have announced none. No word from them about who will be headlining. It has made me think who will they get?
Last year Download had Faith No More, Slipknot and Def Leppard headline so these can't really headline again in 2010. Also high up on their line up were Korn, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson (who was appalling), Pendulum, Whitesnake and ZZ Top. None of which are really headline material or up to much at the moment, so not these.
I then took a look at Sonisphere. They've got Iron Maiden and Rammstein headling 2010 so obviously counts them out. Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax are all set to play other Sonisphere festivals... very unlikely to see them at Download then. Metalica and Linkin Park headlined Sonisphere in 2009 so again I'd count them out. Especially as Linkin Park are said to be working on a new album.
Now the only other festivals that have annouced are Head Rock Calling and Glastonbury. They've got Pearl Jam (I so want to see them) and U2. That counts two more out, and U2 don't really suit Download.
That's a lot of bands that are certainly not going to headline Download 2010. Well some possibly might but unlikely. So who's left? Well there's a few bands.
Well all that we can do now is wait. Wait and see what Download announce but they are lagging behind. Sonisphere +1 anyone?
I saw Fightstar on Sunday at Picturedrome in Northampton. It was a one off acoustic / unplugged gig for around 300 people. OMG! It was fantastic! Definately the best night of the year and over all I rank it as my second favourite gig (second to only Jimmy Barnes). The whole set was quality and executed perfectly. My favourite's of the night were Paint Your Target, Amethyst, Vincent, and Cross out the Stars but EVERY song was amazing. The covers of Jordan Sparks and Don McLean were really both nice supprises as I didn't know the songs before. I took my camera with my and my mate videos every single song! So are the Fightstar unplugged videos in one playlist. Well worth listening to. Enjoy. Read on for the videos.
So the annoucement came today, right when it was supposed to. Several annoucements came today but the most important is the headliners ofcourse. For the Knebworth, UK festival it will be Iron Maiden and Rammstein. Now that's a great first annoucement. The other bands that have so far been announced for Knebworth are Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, Slayer, Anthrax, The Cult, and Iggy and the Stooges. You know you want to read more!
Just a quick heads up to let you know the first announcement for Sonisphere 2010 will be at 6pm GMT this Wednesday. That's less than 48 hours away now! I'll be keeping up with (well trying to) all the Sonisphere 2010 news this year. Check out my Sonisphere page now as I think I might have found the headliner!
Modern Warfare 2. The game I've been waiting for for far too long and I've not written a post about it? Fancy that. Well the main reason is because it was messed around by Play.com big style. See my Play.com complain. In the end I went for the Prestige Edition (with the night vision goggles).
Well I've had it a few weeks now and I've racked up almost 2 days playing it (single player, spec ops and multi-player) mainly on multi-player. I have to say, and it won't be supprising, that it's fantastic! I love it! Online is much faster paced than the last Modern Warfare, singleplayer is more action packed and varied, and spec ops... well there wasn't spec ops in the first one. Check out the full post to see my current Kills and Accuracy stats! Read more.
I got email a few days ago saying that my uncle wanted to send me some trainers that he was sent. I had no idea what they were going to be. Today I got them and they are a new pair of New Vans Mastodon Blood Mountain sk8 shoes. I think they are pretty cool. To see the picture read more.
A few days ago I was on my way to work and on my doorstep was a little parcel. I took a look at it and saw it was from O2 and was addressed to me. I thought bet this is going to be something useless. On the back it said "Just Become"... hmm very curious. Read more.
I preordered Call of Duty Mordern Warfare 2 from Play.com with a guarantee that it would arrive on release day. That didn't happen and then they continue to mess me around. In total I can count FIVE failures on the part of Play.com. Read about them all here: Play.com Complaints.
On Friday night I finished work early and got the train to Birmingham to see Funeral for a Friend and Fightstar at the O2 Academy as part of the Vans Off The Wall night. Read the rest and see the videos here.
It's been a while (damn I've got Staind stuck in my head now) since my last update. The 8 weeks (almost) has had me busier than normal. I've started developing a new website, trying to finish off a freelance job to pay for snowboarding, thinking through countless other ideas to figure what's worthwhile, a new job, a new jQuery project, been to a bunch of gigs and I've started going to the gym again (well today). Work is going great and is my priority is work but I do want to update and improve nojacko.com. along with my other projects. The main improvement needed on nojacko.com is blogging as I've put it on the back burner for far too long now.
Here is my little plan of action...
Just as I was going to a have quick go on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on my PlayStation 3 I couldn't. Before I could go online I had to update to the latest firmware update, firmware 3.0. So I download this and here's what I found. Read more.
I heard about this film when I was watching the BBC News Channel while I was waiting for Click to start. Because Mike Perham had just arrived in port, becoming the youngest person to sail around the world alone, the BBC's live coverage overran into Click's time slot. Whoever controls the BBC News Channel decided to skip Click and show their entertainment show instead. They talked about The Hurt Locker and the general consensus was that it was a good film based on what really happens and doesn't glorify war. What they said and the clips they showed made it sound interesting so I took a look. Read the full review.
Who likes a good zombie film? I certainly do. How about Zombies that are also Nazis? Again, I do. Nazi and zombie are two words that together always get's my attention. To me zombies or the un-dead are evil. Nazis are also evil. So Nazi Zombies are REALLY EVIL. And any film, no, anything that has them both as the baddies will always intrigue me. Død Snø (from now on I’ll just call it Dead Snow) is exactly this, so I had to watch it. Read the full review.
The pictures from Sonisphere are now up. This concludes my Sonisphere reviews and media.
It's here. Hope the wait was worth it. Picture gallary will be up later on today.
Finally I've got the first part of my review of Sonisphere up. Take a read. I'll try to get the pictures up this evening along with the review of Sunday.
Here's the videos I recorded of the bands at Sonisphere, Knebworth House, UK. There's 15 in total, 7 on Saturday and 8 on Sunday. You can also check them out on my YouTube channel. Please rate and comment!
YouTube Link: Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth, UK, 2009
Artists: Blass of Glory, Soil, Alien Ant Farm, Bjorn Again and Linkin Park.
YouTube Link: Sonisphere Saturday 1st August - Blass of Glory, Soil, AAF, Bjorn Again and Linkin Park
Artists: Feeder, Limp Bizkit & Metallica.
YouTube Link: Sonisphere Sunday 2nd August - Feeder, Limp Bizkit, Metallica
Got back today from an absolutely brilliant weekend at the final Sonisphere Festival of the year. Music, beer, BBQ and friends make a great combination. To make it better I got to see my uncle John, auntie Sharn and cousins George and Rosin.
Now I'm on the tail end of a Red Bull high. That all started when we left Knebworth this morning just before 8am. Since we hadn't slept we felt no need to really stay longer. I was stuggling on the drive back so stopped for a Red Bull. 20 mins later I was BUZZING! Never felt so good! The drive home flew by listening to Rage Against The Machine. I felt the high for about 3 hours. Now after a nap and 3 more Red Bulls I'm knackered!
I'll be posting a review of both days tomorrow, including the videos (uploading to YouTube as I type) and some photos.
A really nice think that happend this weekend that I don't want to wait until tomorrow to post. I lost my wallet on Sunday and it had my credit cards, debit card, drivers licence and £80 in cash inside. I thought all hope was lost but amzingly, after Metallica, I went to lost and found and it was there! Awesome! And what really made my day is everything was in it. The legend who found it was kind enough to leave everything, including the £80 which I was sure wouldn't be there. If your reading this and handed a tan leather wallet with "Bad Mother F*cker" printed on it to lost property I thank you so much!
I've had the domains jamesdavidjackson.com and jamesdavidjackson.co.uk for awhile now but I've not really put them to any use other than redirecting here. Yesterday I decided to finally get it up and running. My idea was to have a business card feel to the site. I'm pretty pleased with the site now. I love the background. It was generated by wordle.net using the text from my CV and I think it works really well. Please take a look.
With only a few days till I head down to Knebworth with Matt, Neil and Ian I'm get very excited! My tickets and new BBQ (folded and open) arrived while I was at Silverstone Classic. I'm going VIP thanks to my uncle who has very kindly treated the 4 of us and who has said he'll see what he can do about meeting Linkin Park (that would make my year... No! My DECADE!). As a thank you we've had a whip round and got him a nice gift I'm sure he'll live (I'll update with a picture after we've given it him). I'm so looking for to it now. In order, these are the bands I'm most looking forward to with the number of times I've already seen them in brackets:
There are plenty of other bands I'm looking forward to seeing but don't haven't really heard much of them (like Corey Taylor, Dead by April, Masterdon, Nine Inch Nails, ...) so I can really judge them. As for the bands I've not mentioned, well I've got an open mind to them all... even Avenged Sevenfold who have never really done anything for me when I've heard them.
Not long now! 2 days, 14 hours and 45 mins at the time I post this! Tick tock, tick tock...
Well this weekend has been a good one. I went down to Silverstone with my Dad and 7 of his mates to watch some racing and have some beers and that's what we did 
. We headed down on Thursday and pitched our tents on a really nice campsite that had a lovely down to a lake. Within an hour of putting it up we lost the big gazebo to the wind. It was pretty funny really. It folded over itself and went over the neighbours car and caravan. He then packed up and moved away. After that we drank some beers, BBQed some food and chilled.
Friday was all about qualifying. We sat on the corner of Woodcote (video). And headed into the paddock for a nose around the cars. At night Top Loader, Blue and the Pussycat Dolls were on the stage. We all headed down to watch PCD. They weren't the best but they look good (Ashley is my favourite). I got three videos: Jai Ho, Hush Hush and Don't Cha.
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On the Saturday we watched a few races, the F1 qualifying and then took a walk around the track. Massa's accident (video is UK but I'm sure you can find it elsewhere) was a unfortunate moment. Hopefully he'll be fine. By the time we made it round to Stowe it was some old Le Mans cars racing (video). I also took a few images that I sticked together using Windows Live Photo Gallery to create a nice panoramic shot of Stowe (thumbnail on the right). After that and BBQ we headed in to watch Carlos Santana. He was great. The vocals weren't as strong as I'd like but very enjoy able. I got a couple move videos of Santana: Maria Maria and Smooth.
The Sunday was all about the F1. We headed down to the golf club and watched it in the bar. They had some rediculously soft leather sofas. It was nice to see Hamilton back on top. In the evening it was quite cold and raining so we headed to the hotel by the golf club and had a few drinks in the warmth of the bar surrounded by photos of F1 drivers.
All in all, apart from being sick out of car window on the way back, it was a great weekend. Here's a video from the weekend and as the weekend was about racing it's a racing video. All my others can be found on my YouTube channel.
Next weekend it's Sonisphere!
So today I went to the Vic Bikers Pub in Coalville today to see my mates' band play. Armed with my new camera and recorded some of their set. I'm not a huge fan of their style music but they are all good at what they do. The band is minus James Miller today but Rob Greaves moved from bass to guitar and, Phil Seaman's brother, Nate Seaman took the roll of bassist. So here it is Evangelion Live at Hard Drive Festival.
Band Members (from left to right): Nate Seaman (bass), Phil Seaman (guitar), Neil Vernon (vocals), Kane Dalton (drums) & Rob Greaves (guitar).
Last night I finished the watching Band of Brothers for what must be the 15th time, but the first time on Blu-Ray. Band of Brothers is by far my favourite thing that has ever been on TV. What it is is a TV miniseries made by the BBC and HBO, executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, based on the book (of the same name) written by Stephen Ambrose. It tells the story of the E (Easy) Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. The story follows Easy Company from the basic training right the way through to the end of World War II. Easy Company parachuted in to France on D-Day, parachuted into Netherlands with Operation Market Garden, fought in the Battle of Bastogne and ended the war capturing Hitler's Eagle's Nest.
What makes Band of Brothers is so good is many things. Firstly the characters and cast. Each character in Band of Brother was based on a real person and you get to know them and love them. The cast was perfectly picked and what I've found is that seeing when I see any of the actors again in other films and TV shows I cannot help but remember them as their character from Band of Brothers. Before each episode and and the end of some clips are shown from interviews with the verterans of Easy Company talking about the events that happened. It's another thing that Band of Brothers does to really get you connected with the characters.
Another thing that makes it great is the quality of the effects, visual and special. Now, some of the computer graphics do look a little old but it's always the case and really not that noticeable because it doesn't rely too much on these effects. The visual effects, namely the explosions just look so real... never over the top... and only ever used when needed and in the quantity that is believable. Probably the best visual effects where used during the time Easy spend in the forrest on the outskirts of Bastogne. The Germans where bombarding the American in the artillery and on the ground the explosions where kickup up the ground and causing the tree around to explode. It's fantastic but at the time same time you realised this is actually what the men had to endure and what a terrifying experience it must have been.
That brings me to my next point. Because of the cast and the realism of the effects Band of Brothers really captures you and you get so emotionally attached to the charcters. This is what seperates Band of Brothers from everything else. At the end of each episode I can't help but think about the real members of Easy, and everyone else who has fought in wars but inparticularly Easy Company and what they had to go through. Such horrible moments that for the most of us is something we will never have to experience. Seeing your friends gettings injured or killed infront of your eyes must be one of the most terrible things I could ever imagine happening. The events of Bastogne also really stands out as another one of the periods of time that I couldn't imagine myself being. The freezing weather, lack of food, ammo and supplies, and the consistant shelling must have been so hard to cope with.
The last point I'd like to mention is the last episode. Every time I see it it brings a tear to my eye and I wouldn't have it any other way. Right at the end Easy Company are shown playing baseball and Major Winters (played by Damian Lewis) commentates on each member, describing what they went on to do after the war was open including what he ended up doing. During the game of baseball everyone is called over where the news of the Japanese surrender was annouced to such relief as the men who hadn't earned enough points to go home would actually be going home.
I cannot recommend enough Band of Brothers and really feel what I've said above doesn't do it the justice it really deserves but hopefully after reading this someone will go out and enjoy it in the way that I have.
A few weeks ago I was watching James May on The Moon, it was very nice program (as most of May's programmes). While watching James May in a U2 spy plane on the edge of space I had the idea to create a list of things before I die because seeing the curvature of the earth is something I would really like to see.
I've thought quite a bit about this list before I put it online but I still don't think it's complete. However there's plenty of things on there now so here it is: Things To Do Before I Die.
Last year I had just started working and on the day of my graduation I went to work in the morning. I left work with a few hours to get home to change and then head to the DeMontfort Hall for the graduation ceremony. Unfortunately within a minute or two of getting on the M1 motorway traffic came to a halt. It took me about 6 or 7 hours to get home! And by that time I have missed my graduation. My Mum and Grandma were REALLY disapointed they didn't get a photo of my in my gown. Grandma has everyone's graduation on her wall except mine. So this afternoon I drove into Leicester and to the University of Leicester. Before I could borrow a gown I had to prove I graduated last year. That makes sense but I hadn't thought about that. So in the end a phone call was made to the registrations office that was sorted. So I borrowed a gown and had my photo taken. Now I've just got to order the overpriced photo online.
I really hate photos of myself and this one is going to be displayed in my Grandparents's living room for everyone to see. But my Grandma really wants it on the wall and I don't want to disapoint her so for her birthday she'll be getting a picture of moi!
The camera that I got free from CokeZone came today, it was even sent by courier and it was a before 12 noon delivery too. For something I got free it's really good service. Really it arrived yesterday but I was out so even better.
Anyway, the camera is great. It's got all the features I need. My favourite is the smile detection. Turn this on and it'll find faces and when all the faces it's tracking have a smile then it takes the photo. The auto setting is pretty damn good too. Point and click and you get a really good, in focus picture. It detects things like face (I've seen it track 8 faces in one shot), if it's a portrait image, close up of a detail object and basically automatically selects the right setting for you instead of having to change it yourself for each picture.
The only bad thing about this camera is the battery life although this might be because I've been messing around with it too much.
Once again, cheers Coca Cola. Why don't Pepsi do offers like this? Come to thing of it I've got like 10-20 Coca Cola glasses sitting on a shelf but only one or two Pepsi glasses. No wonder Coca Cola (as a company) has over half the carbonated drinks market in the UK. Coke taste better than Pepsi too, but I remember a time when it was the other way around and the Pepsi changed their taste... yuck!
While I was looking at my stats for www.nojacko.com I noticed one of my search engine refferals was from the search term 'who owns sonisphere'. I had to Google it, didn't see my site but then clicked Images and the first image was from my site. Seeing this I thought I could probably get some more traffic from Sonisphere related searches so I created a page dedicated to Sonisphere. Hopefully this will work. It has actually always been a little plan of mine to try to capture little traffic from a lot of different keywords and phrases but I hadn't really started doing this... untill now.
Today at 11:08am I managed to bag myself a free camera from CokeZone. I've been trying to get one since Monday but managed to miss it every time because they only release a few at a random times each day. But today I managed to get it! The camera is a Sony Cybershot DSCT90S and on Amazon (at the time of posting) costs £234.45. So I'm pretty happy today and would like to thank my Mum who drank most of the Coke to get the points. She'll be getting my old 6 megapixel camera. I'll post a review of the camera after I've had a play with it.
CokeZone is a reward scheme that Coca Cola are running. There are codes etched into the bottles of Coca Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero that you input into the website and earn 2 (750ml) or 3 (2litre) points. Then with these points you can buy things from their store. Since I started collecting points late last year I've got Burnout Paridise (PS3), Spore (PC), The Sims 3 (PC) and now, best of all, a camera. Other big prizes that I've seen include Sony Ercison phones, iPod Nanos, Xbox 360s, and some others. So you can see there are some decent rewards for collecting points. I do wish there was a few more big rewards like cameras and also a bigger selection of PlayStation 3 games but I can't really complain because it's a free reward scheme.
Cheers Coca Cola!
I got a few more tee shirts today from Busted Tees, 5 to be exact. Unfortunately they didn't send me them twice like they did last time. Oh well. I do really like Busted Tees with the price of delivery included they work out to be about the same price as a tee shirt from say Next or Burtons and very good quality. It's just a shame it takes about 2 weeks for them to arrive. Anyway, here are the ones I bought.
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Happy Birth-anniversary (as my Dad always says) to me! I had a pretty nice weekend. Yesterday I chilled out at home playing Call of Duty and listening to Fightstar for most of the day. In the evening I went into Leicester with a bunch of my friends. Starting off at Soar Point and then making our way on to Redeemer were we spent most of the night. A good time was had by all. Today, my actual birth-anniversary, I had my family around for a chinese and some awesome chocolate and fudge birthday cake! So all in all my birthday weekend was a really nice.
Now I'm into my 23rd year on Earth and I hope this year will be a good one. I don't see any reason why it won't be. I've got plenty of things to look forward to including Neil and Rachel's wedding in Spring. And hopefully I'll be able to tick off a few thing from my list of things to do before I die. Cheers!
As mentioned in the Download Feastival 2009 post, I recorded two videos of my mate Kane drumming on bits of rubbish at Download. Here are the videos!
The new iPhone OS 3.0 came out a few days ago and the new iPhone, iPhone 3GS (the S stands for Speed), came out today. I was thinking about upgrading to the 3GS untill I saw I'd have to pay the full £440.40 for the 16GB version or £538.30 for the 32GB verion. No subsidized mid-contract upgrade this time. Such a shame, I was hoping that it would be the same price for me as it is for new customers (£87.11-£274.23 depending on version and contract rate). If it had been I would have upgraded right away because EnviroFone are offering £180 for my iPhone and it wouldn't have cost me much, if anything at all. Oh well! I'm still very happy with the iPhone 3G and the combination of the new OS and Google Sync service has made it better.
iPhone OS 3.0
Well I upgraded the Operating System on my iPhone 3G on the 19th of June and I'm liking what I see. The main thing, for me, is MMS. Really MMS should have been in the iPhone from the start but it's here now (nice to see Apple doesn't forget customers after making the initial sale) and it works really nicely, exactly how I thought it would work.
The copy/paste functionallity is nice too. So far I've only used it to demostrate how it actually works but I can see plenty of uses for this, like copying a phone number from your contact into an email, text or something.
Search is another note worthy addition. Search on the iPhone searches pretty much the whole phone (calendar, contacts, apps, ...) and I like the way it works. I've found it's much easier to use search to find a contact than going into the contacts application.
The only other new feature that I might use is the voice memo app. I can imagine there's 100s of apps on the store that do this already, EverNote being the one I can remember, so I don't think it was really needed. Having said that it's very simple to use and if you just wanna make a quick voice memo it works a treat.
Apple claim something like 100+ new features have been added. But that's enough for now.
Unrelated to the new 3.0 software is Google Sync. I only found this recently but love it. It acts as an exchange server to sync your Gmail contacts and your Google Calendar. It's really good, although to be great it would need to work with your Gmail emails too. I'm sure Google are working on this and I'll be pleased when it comes!
Download was great! Saw loads of cool bands. My top 5 were:
I'm going to be posting a full review shortly but just don't have time to finish it now. Hopefully tomorrow but if no I'll get it done this weekend.
I also want to some post pictures however I didn't take a camera so I'm waiting on my friends to upload them to Facebook before I can post any. Come on guys! Well I can't push them really as I've not uploaded my video yet. It will be entitled "Kane the Rubbish Drummer" and that's all I'm going to give away for now. It's definately work watching!
Look out for the update in the next few days!
I ordered three tees from BustedTees and this morning they came. There was 2 packages for 3 tees. Looked a bit strange to me. So I opened them up and I found I got the same 3 tees TWICE!
As an honest guy, and knowing full well they wouldn't want to refund the postage cost of me returning one of the sets, I emailed them to let them know. And yes, they are letting me keep them as "back ups for when you wear through the 1st batch".
So that was a nice supprise.
Oh and The Sims 3 came today. I'll have a play when I get back from Download and post a review.
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Having got my PlayStation 3 back after 2 months being without I was geared up for a mega gaming session this weekend and that's what I did. I had ordered Red Faction Guerilla and it came on Saturday morning. I started playing it early afternoon on Saturday and I didn't stop until the early hours of Sunday. This game is so much fun! I love it!
It's a free-roaming/action/shooter game and all three areas have been executed awesomely. The map size is pretty big, although some areas of the map look like you can go there but can't, it's still big. The two main things I love about this game are the sledgehammer and the destruction. The sledgehammer is your basic tool/weapon and it can be use to kill or destroy. Running up to EDF troops and whacking them with the sledgehammer is priceless. Destruction: all the buildings and structures in Red Faction Guerilla can be leveled. I've never actually seen destruction in a game like this, it's beautiful. You can level a massive building within minutes or even seconds using any combination of vehicles, walkers, guns, explosives and your trusty sledgehammer. After charging through a building with a walker, my favourite method of destruction is setting a few remote charges and trying to destroy the building in one push of a button.
The single player has been so addictive that I've only been online with it for a couple of rounds. In those rounds I can see multiplayer is going to keep me entertained long after the single player game is over. I'll probably post more about the multiplayer mode when I've had a good play on it.
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My tickets for Download came this morning and then this afternoon my free Guitar Hero guitar game.
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First thing that came today was my box of 10 Montecristo No. 4 cigars. Woohoo. They'll be nice at Download.
Then a few hours later a currier came to take my broken PlayStation 3 and replace it with a refurbished one. Bring on the mega gaming session this weekend!
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There's a little story behind the PS3. It had been broke for 2 months, it was 2 years old so out of warrenty. Sony wanted charge me £145 to replace it. Being a little broke I couldn't pay that so I had a look in the Sales of Goods Act and found out the retailer (GAME) should repair or replace it. So fast forward 1 & 1/2 months and 3 letters to GAME. Game took it to be repaired, came back last Friday and stopped working on the Sunday 
. So I rang them up on Tuesday (2 days ago). They wanted me to send it back again, get a gift card and go out and buy a preowned one. I didn't want that because mines an original 60GB model. So I convinced them to pay for the £145 for Sony to replace it. Within 48 hours I they took mine away and replaced it.
It's a great service by Sony really. GAME on that other hand tried to convince me the Sales of Goods Act was not what it was to try and get out of paying. But in the end they have agreed to refund me the £145 and it's cost me a few letters sent recorded delivery. I will be putting the letters i sent to GAME online soon so someone else might be helped.
In a weeks time I'll be going to Download at Donnington Park. Really looking forward to it, will be great. After Download I'll be going to Silverstone Classic at Silverstone and then on the 1st and 2nd of August I'll be at Sonisphere at Knebworth House. The cool thing is that Sonisphere is being set up by my uncle who owns K2ours.
All these events should be great!!! I'll be posting pictures and my thoughts on each.
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Over the last week or so I've been working some more on the CMS. The main factor contributing to this is that I'd told a friend (Matt) he could use it on his site. Last week he bought his domain name and wanted to get started. The main features that I've added are:
You can see the cms running here on www.nojacko.com and also on Matt's site www.mattcrane.co.uk. I've let him have full access to the skin, views and css so he has full controll of the site's look.
As for the next set of changes... top of the to-do list is mainly behind the scenes improvements. They shouldn't really take too long (fingers crossed). Afterwards it's going to be galleries or blogs and then some widgets for both of them.
Hello World. This is my first post for the new nojacko.com. I'm going to touch on a few of things:
who I am
about this website
it's reason for being
the blog
Who I Am
I am James Jackson and this is my personal website. That's all I shall say in this post about myself. If you want to know more check out the about page.
This Website
This site will be a place for me to blog, show off my work, collect useful links, test new stuff I'm working on and other things I've not thought off yet. This site has actually been around a few years now. It's not been kept up to date. The main reason being is it was all static html and a bit of a pain to update. So about 8 months ago (August/September 2008) I started working on creating a CMS. I've been working on it on and off since and in that time so much has changed and at one point I even rewrote the lot. All the time has actually worked out really well! Because I've been taking my time I've been able to think through everything before starting to implement it. The CMS so much better for this, as any project should be if you plan it well. At the moment the CMS is not for sale, but after it's been proven to work and new features are added it might be avalible to buy...
..back to the point. The site is now running on the above mentioned CMS meaning it's really easy for me to edit and update. So with the new easy of updating and a promise to myself to keep the site update it's looking good.
Reason
The original reason for this site was to have my own personal site. Before, I had only had websites trying to make a little money of the interweb. This site was to really to be about me, bring together all my sites and also be a site that wouldn't disappear off the face of the Earth like some of my other sites have. The name? nojacko was a name I thought of for playing games online. Jacko is a way to common nickname, so I came up with something more unique. I think it came from a friend of mine who would say "Nooooo Jacko" if I did something stupid at school. I was a bit silly at school so it was said a lot and the way he said it was always the same. So when I decided to think of a unique name it must have popped into my head. It wasn't being used by others and seemed alright to me... so I used it.
Blog
A quick note about this blog. The blog will be about anything and everything. Whatever I feel like really. Each post will be tagged and categorized, but until there are most posts I won't be listing the categories or tags. It'll look a bit plain with only 1 or 2 posts in each category/tag, and I haven't really finished the blogging system. You won't be able to comment on posts. I don't really think this is necessary for my site but if you do want to comment feel free to contact me.
Well that's it for my first post. Quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be.
Some Random Images
